


put your kingdom up for sale

by philthestone



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brief appearances by other characters - Freeform, F/M, Gamora-centric, Gen, Infinity War Speculation, not really bc this is so ........... specifically wound around my niche headcanons but anyways!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 20:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13771746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: Gamora leans forward in her seat, her cheeks loosening with the fade of her smile."I'm not the leader," she says, because that should be obvious by now."Uh huh," says Rocket, in a tone that leaves her feeling absurdly more wrong-footed than before.





	put your kingdom up for sale

**Author's Note:**

> ive been slowly plugging at this for months now & its not my favorite thing ive ever written but i think im ... satisfied with it.
> 
> idk man i just think that exploring gamora's position as a leader with regard to who she is as a character and what she's endured would be really fascinating and good. also i love any excuse to write about gamora always, so [shrug emoji]
> 
> some disclaimers: the references to the ornament in gamora's braid are originally @enigma731's concepts; the title is from fleetwood mac's iconic "gold dust woman"; and, finally, any references to infinity war are pure speculation and not at all rooted in actual Content. mostly i just cried to zainab about melodramatic possibilities & she shamelessly encouraged me to write fic
> 
> reviews fill my heart with joy!

If she closes her eyes, she lives through it again, so she tries not to blink at all.

Just stares, unseeing, at the scratched metal panel of the ship’s interior, forehead a hairsbreadth away from the wall.

_Imagine what would happen if you really were in this all alone_ , she hears her sister’s voice saying, from those very few months ago. And the following, stilted reassurance: _He probably won’t die tomorrow_.

_Foolish_ , is the first thought that keeps coming to her head, cutting her legs out from under her, devastating the air in her lungs and the strength holding her upright. The Milano’s walls are cool against her forehead as she slumps, shaking. 

_Imagine what would happen if you really were in this all alone._

The word _alone_ comes with the memory, unbidden, untrue. Gamora knows it to be untrue, if only for the muffled shouting that is coming from the other side of the wall. Its volume is blanketed by the Milano’s thin walls and her own grief.

_Grief_. There’s another meaningless word; she does not have time for grief. She does not have time to be alone. And Thanos knows this, knows that he has immutably changed the game, knows that he’s baiting her, knows that they are in a state of disarray, knows, knows, _knows_.

Her fingers tighten in tandem around a loose rail on the wall and the datachip in her hand, and she can feel the metal of the rail twist and bend in her grip, can feel the tendons in her wrist quivering.

Against her other fingers, the minute ridges of the datachip are smooth.

Thanos does not know everything.

To say that this is what Gamora was afraid of since that first infinity stone is an oversimplification, a half-truth. _This_ being a nebulous word, of course, and her fears being many and convoluted. But they stayed a step ahead the first time, through sheer force of will, through dumb luck and a set of clever, sticky fingers.

Gamora squeezes her eyes shut, thumb and forefinger pressing into the chip as hard as she dares.

She can trace it back to the second, now that she _knows_ – the exact press of his hand against her hip, a momentary grab and pull into a shadow to escape notice aboard that nightmarish ship. She has known Peter for years now, and the fact that she did not notice the subtleties in the press of his palm or the curve of his fingers – the minute twist of his wrist that allowed him to slip the stolen chip unnoticed into her belt – is leaving an ache in her chest.

She doesn’t know if Peter had anticipated getting caught. 

But then, she thinks, Thanos doesn’t know that either, or he would have planned ahead, would have chased after Gamora.

_She_ has the datachip. 

If Thanos wishes to bait her, the fate of the universe hanging in the balance – then so be it. Gamora is a formidable force to be reckoned with.

The clamour on the other side of the wall swells, and Gamora opens her eyes.

**

When she is thirteen, on the cusp of girlhood and just young enough to remember that were her parents and people still living she would have been gifted a ceremony to determine which ornament to weave into her braid, Thanos calls her to his throne room.

He too is offering her a gift: a sword, sleek and deadly, glittering at the end with its sharpness. 

Gamora remembers in bits and pieces and colours that her father was a warrior, that he too had a sword of his own, but she cannot recall the details. Was his sword thin and balanced, like this one, or broad and heavy instead? Did he fumble with it the first time he fitted the curve of his hand to its hilt? 

She wonders if her ornament would have started her on her warrior’s path, like him. Like _him_ , and not like this. She bites down on the inside of her cheek, thirteen and slight and small, though still stubbornly taller than the rapidly-shooting Nebula, standing ramrod straight at the foot of Thanos’s throne. 

Thanos says, “You will make a formidable warrior, Gamora,” and Gamora does not let herself tremble, because she has learned that repressing such a childish urge saves her the experience of having that tremble beaten out of her. 

_Warrior_.

She wonders if she is allowed to hate that word, because her father must have wanted it for her, _she_ must have wanted it, once. She is not sure that she still wants it.

She takes the sword.

“The Godslayer,” says Thanos, booming and looming and a figure that Gamora is learning shard by shard to steel herself against. “A worthy gift for a worthy daughter, isn’t it?”

Gamora nods, and grips the hilt, and tells herself she _is_ steel, like what she imagines the hilt of her father’s own blade was. She can barely remember his face, or the fact that where her father was a warrior, her mother was a leader, warm and tall and smiling, powerful in her own right.

“Thank you,” she says, and takes the sword.

**

She is thirty-four, now, and miraculously alive.

There had been an admitted swoop of relief in her belly, Gamora thinks, when Peter took charge of the conversation and subsequent plan. This is perhaps somewhat shameful in its own right, but Gamora shakes away that thought as quickly as it comes. She had been glad they were doing _something_ , rather than running away, and she had been honest when she said that it would be an honour to die among friends.

And besides – twelve percent of a plan was _far_ more than what she had when she gripped the orb tight in her fingers and insisted that they take it to the Nova Corps, mind full of death and destruction and the ever-blurring snatches of memory she still carries with her, the ones that for whatever reason, she had felt compelled to share in part with the man currently somewhere across their gifted Nova Corps suite, fumbling with the first aid kit.

An infinity stone. And they came out alive. 

If she were the type of person to ever be _reeling_ , then that is what she would still be doing.

But she is a warrior, and an assassin, and she does not reel.

_Because life’s given us a chance_.

Not entirely ridiculous, in retrospect, but she cannot, for some reason, imagine herself making such a speech. Thanos stressed power, and strength, and tactical proficiency, yes – but not leadership. She can plan and execute, identify a problem and address it, has no qualms declaring that she is lethal in battle. But to _lead_ – she had had no plan, she knows now, no idea how to organize the others into mitigating the threat that was Ronan and the stone. No problem, she supposes, had she been working completely alone, but with comrades, _friends_ –

“Hey, you still with us?”

Gamora does not jerk in surprise, but it’s a close thing. She blames the lack of vigilance on her exhaustion, and the very slowly dulling full-body ache that appears to be an annoying handprint left behind by the stone. It’s been – a chaotic couple of days.

_That’s no excuse_ , she thinks, somewhat viciously, before she blinks and refocuses her eyes; Peter is standing in front of her, a fleck of what she identifies as antiseptic foam caught in his hair, and Gamora realizes that she has been standing immobile in the doorway of his room for more than five minutes. He’d left it open, in her defence, and while she still hurts all over, her burns are slowly healing over and the ache _is_ dulling; _he_ does not have the same implants she does. She had been … concerned.

But he’s not dead, which she realizes now is the reason why she decided to hover in the doorway to begin with. A survival instinct, Gamora identifies, one that has kept her alive more than once, and is now being adapted to accommodate the concept of teammates. Peter Quill has not belatedly dropped dead of overexposure to raw immortal power, and she is somehow comforted by that knowledge.

“I’m – yes,” says Gamora, forcing the words out, and frowning to cover her marginal slip in alertness. “That looks bad.”

“Looks worse than it is,” he says, and makes an attempt at shrugging only to wince hard, his shoulders tense. 

She raises an eyebrow.

“I lied,” he says. “It’s shit.”

Her own healing factor is very slowly taking care of the burns tracing along her skin, slight webbing prominent on her hands and shoulders and neck. Peter’s are visibly worst, even now that he’s actually made the effort to clean them: red and raw and angry, travelling up his neck and over his cheek, marking up his hands. He’s still wearing his scorched and dirtied Ravager leathers, which makes Gamora wonder if he bothered to check the rest of his injuries. 

Judging by the force of his earlier wince, the burns don’t stop when they reach the collar of his shirt. Gamora’s scowl deepens.

“You need to clean those properly.”

“‘M fine,” he says, ignoring her expression, “I’ll just – I dunno, hang out on that bed. Not move for a couple hours, or days, or something.”

“You’re holding the first aid kit _in your hands_ ,” says Gamora, “you need to –”

“Says the lady whose cuts are still covered in dirt,” he interrupts her, grimacing very slightly and moving away towards the big neatly-made bed in the middle of the room, adjacent to the bathroom he just emerged from. Gamora pads after him, feet booted but exhausted frame clothed in some new, soft material that was issued to them by Dey and the Nova Officers. She’s not sure that she likes it much – it’s thin, flimsy, and feels uncomfortable against her uncleaned skin.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Uh huh.”

“My mods will take care of it.”

Peter flops backwards onto the bed, and Gamora’s instinctive warning is drowned by his garbled and sudden groan. She wonders if she will be spending all of her time around Peter Quill frowning.

Specifically because he is smiling – because that _is_ a smile, albeit a lopsided, half-done thing – up at her from his prone position, the grin tugging at the raw skin of his cheek. She can see the debris already smudging onto the clean crisp sheets covering the mattress, and the awkward way he’s cradling his left hand against his stomach.

“You need to –”

“So do you. C’mon, you can’t tell me you’ve just been hanging out here in pain this whole time, Gamora.”

There is an absurd, white-hot lick of anger that curls in the pit of Gamora’s stomach.

“Like you’ve been doing?”

“Hey, I cleaned up –”

“Badly.”

“ _Badly_ , okay, hang on –”

“You cannot just – _do_ that!” she snaps, finally, her shoulders stiff and her hands in fists at her sides. He stares at her.

“… Do a shit job of takin’ care of myself?” he ventures, which is closer to the mark than he likely thinks but far too silly when spoken out loud for her to acknowledge, so instead she digs her blunt nails into her palm and says,

“You should have died.”

Peter blinks owlishly up at her from his position on the bed.

“You mean like … from the stone?”

She ignores him, and continues: “You should have died the moment it touched you – you _knew_ it could kill you, you had _seen_ what it could do and you – _you_ –” She refuses to turn away, which is perhaps foolish, but she had acknowledged that the chaos of the past seventy two timeparts has dulled her reactions. She bites the inside of her cheek instead, cutting herself off; her own frustration is confusing her, moreso for her inability to actually articulate why she is upset.

Apparently, it is no more clear to Peter, who is very slowly and painstakingly easing his way up into a sitting position so that he can pull a ridiculous face at her properly.

“Yeah,” he says, like an idiot, “so did you.”

“I didn’t _dive across a battlefield to grab it with my bare hands_ ,” she says, fists clenching so hard she thinks her tendons might be trembling from the sheer force of it.

“But you grabbed _my_ hand,” he says, frowning now. “We were all ready to die, wasn’t that the whole – die among friends, or whatever.”

Gamora opens her mouth, and feels the words choke themselves still stuck in her chest. 

Friends. _Friends_. She had been ready to die among this bedraggled bunch she considered her friends, and yet without some kind of guidance, direction, without that ridiculous speech – _to give a shit_ , she thinks, and almost scoffs – she wonders if she would have had anyone to die among at all. They were not a unit, she wants to say, and she had had no idea – _still_ has no idea – how to make them one.

_Foolishness_ , says a voice in her head that sounds annoyingly like Nebula. _Weakness. Even I know better than that_.

Than _that_. Than to – rely on someone else’s contribution to get something done. To rely on something bigger than just herself.

But the ache from the stone is slowly fading, and she is here, near-pardoned for her laundry list of crimes in a Nova-gifted suite on Xandar, standing opposite a two-bit thief who just risked his life for millions without a second thought, vaguely aware that the rest of their companions are nursing their own wounds somewhere within a fifteen foot radius of them. 

She wants – she _wants_ to have that bigger thing.

“Yes,” she says.

“So?”

She stares at his confusion, at the way his hair is still sticking up at the top, and the burns and bruises discolouring his pale alien skin. She thinks of his predictable brand of arrogance and the imperfect kindness in his eyes and the reckless attachment he has to something as breakable as a plastic cassette. Perhaps that attachment has rubbed off on her, because she’s terrified, suddenly, that if he were not here she would somehow lose this concept of friendship she has come to know.

Certainly, she thinks, someone like Rocket would be no better at it than Gamora herself.

But that’s foolish, and so Gamora says, “Nothing. So nothing.”

“Gamora,” he starts.

“I will clean up if you do,” she blurts out, and then frowns _again_ , at her own traitorous mouth. But perhaps a bargain like this is not the worst thing she could make – a shower might help the efficiency of her healing, after all.

He stares at her for a moment, mouth hanging open a little stupidly, before a slow grin starts to grow on his face.

She steels herself against the expected quip, or a mockery of her slip-up. That, she can handle, if it means he’ll stop being an ass and take the necessary steps to make sure he heals properly.

But he only says, “Yeah, alright,” and Gamora blinks.

“Yes,” she repeats, wrong-footed.

“ _Yeah_ ,” says Peter, rolling his eyes and widening his grin. “C’mere, help me up and maybe leave or somethin’ so I can strip.”

She stares at him, for another long moment – long enough that his expression falters, just slightly. Right on the edge of slipping, she thinks, then swallows back the sudden and jarring tightness in her throat. 

She reaches down and takes his hand. _He_ knows how to do this, even if she does not. 

In spite of herself, it is an oddly comforting thought.

**

The woods of Berhert have started to feel familiar, which Gamora thinks immediately means that they should leave soon. Familiarity is dangerous. Familiarity leads to blind trust, to doing things that they really should have known better than to do.

Here is the truth: Gamora is crafted, bone and sinew, to fight.

To fight for _everything_ – the thinning strands of her wavering self-identity somewhere at the top of the piling list, perched perilously over the taste of fresh fruit and the value of her life and the favor of a jailor she despised.

She was poised, then, to continue fighting, even after she escaped. Prepared to have to bare her teeth, to _defend_ , among her new friends. They spent their time arguing long before they saved an entire planet by sheer dumb luck, and it only took a few hours stuck in their Xandarian hotel to start arguing again.

She didn’t notice that Peter almost unconsciously started expecting her to take his side. It would have been a realization that would by all accounts have had her setting her jaw and grinding her teeth, except that were she to have noticed it, it would swiftly have been followed by the second realization that more often than not, she would have taken his side … anyway.

Which could not have possibly be explained outside of the third, and most sobering realization: that he kept – _deferring_ to her.

Which is why they are currently on Berhert, too depleted in supplies and emotional fortitude to pack up an leave before that familiarity strikes again. If they’re not gone within the next two day cycles, Gamora is very sure the Sovereign will locate them, and _then_ where will they be.

Their ship is broken, though. And they’re all sleeping in the big bed in the captain’s cabin of the Quadrant together, because no one can actually get any restful sleep alone. There’s almost something familiar about that particular after-effect of trauma, if Gamora is being honest.

_Familiar_. Gamora grimaces without realizing it, and under her booted feet the twiggy underbrush snaps.

“I gotta ask, are you pacing ‘cause something’s wrong, or just for somethin’ to do?”

Gamora continues to pace, looping her hands through the belt loops at her hips.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says.

Peter’s voice is muffled from behind the ship’s panel he’s hidden under, but that doesn’t seem to stop his incessant need to talk. “See, that sounds like something a wrong person would say.”

Gamora stills, hands still planted firmly on her hips, and stares at his legs, which are the only part of him visible. They’re splayed a bit awkwardly and covered in streaks of dirt from Berhert’s forest floor, as well as something that looks like an oily handprint far too small to be anyone but Rocket and probably done out of a last dreg of spite. Ship’s oil is, as Peter would say, a bitch to get out of clothes.

His long legs shuffle, boots digging into the dirt, before there’s a muffled thump, a garbled curse, and then Peter’s hands emerge to grab the edge of the panel, hauling him back out into the open to give her a sheepish grin.

“You know what I meant,” he says.

“A wrong person,” repeats Gamora, flatly.

“Yeah, yeah. What’s up.”

“Nothing is up,” Gamora says, feeling somewhat like a broken version of one of Peter’s tapes. “I’m just standing here.”

“ _No_ ,” says Peter, rolling over in the flattened undergrowth to stretch out an arm and grab one of the multitools laying around on the forest floor. “You’ve been pacin’ like the world’s ending for the past ten minutes, like I said. That ain’t _standing there_.”

“I like pacing,” says Gamora.

“I noticed.”

She feels the corners of her lips pull downwards before she turns away, starting to pace again. Peter makes a noise, something of a protest, and she can see him wave one of his hands rather lamely in her direction with a, “Gamora –”

She thinks about saying that staying here too long is dangerous, but she can’t imagine a configuration of that statement that doesn’t sound insensitive to their collective state of vulnerability. To _Peter’s_ state of vulnerability, specifically, which brings her back to familiarity and the very _problem_ that had her pacing to begin with.

Oh.

The air is fresh enough not to be heavy in her chest, so she knows that the weird feeling she suddenly has is not a function of her environment.

“If you’re worried about the Sovereign,” Peter says, balancing back on his elbows and concentrating on changing the setting on the tool in his hands, “Rocket says he’s set up boobie traps again. And some kinda scrambler, like around the clearing.”

That he anticipated what she stopped herself from saying makes her freeze again, throat drying against the heaviness.

“Anyway,” Peter continues, tucking his chin in and making a face at the stubborn multitool, “even if we wanted to leave, we couldn’t, ‘cause the ship’s still –”

“I’m sorry I told you to go with him,” she blurts out. The words hang, in all their heaviness, in the air in front of her face.

Slowly, elbows still planted in the dirt, Peter lowers the multitool from in front of his face and stares at her. 

“What?”

“I –” Gamora’s hand makes a vague gesture seemingly of its own accord, like something that is not Gamora is controlling its movements. She is not sure if that thought is frightening or relieving. “I insisted – that we go. I made us go with him, I said –”

“Woah woah woah woah –”

“I’m sorry,” Gamora repeats, her jaw tight, her gaze stuck on one of the open, sparking wires along their precious ship’s ravaged hull. It keeps flickering lamely, shooting flecks of energy out as though it is insistent on doing a job that it is not strong enough for, has been torn apart enough to never be able to do properly. If they don’t tie it up and re-wire it, it could be a potential safety hazard.

Peter doesn’t seem to mind, though; the wire’s been sparking this entire time he’s been fiddling with the ship’s underbelly, and he seems to have accepted it as something that they’ll get to fixing up in due course. 

“Apology _not_ accepted,” says Peter.

Gamora’s gaze slips away from the wire to stare at him.

“I understand,” she starts, but before she finishes he’s talking again, voice taking on the incredulous whine it sometimes has when he goes up against the others on things that he insists just _aren’t_ socially acceptable.

“You didn’t make me do anything!” 

It’s a loud declaration that might have sounded petulant were the situation not so very specifically caught on little unspoken details. It’s followed by the lanky movement of elbows displacing dirt and underbrush as he clambers into a sitting position, the appalled gape on his face something that Gamora’s brain identifies as objectively amusing. It _would_ be amusing, just as his voice _might_ have been petulant, were everything else not – 

It _is_ amusing, Gamora thinks, when it is directed at Rocket, or Drax, or even Groot. Peter’s defiant inability to regulate the extreme emotion in his facial expressions has always been a source of morbid fascination for Gamora, if she is being honest with herself. 

It’s not exactly amusing now, which is not something Gamora is used to. She frowns.

“Peter –”

“This is _none_ of this is your fault! Are you seriously – Gamora, what the _hell_!” 

Her fingers tighten in her own belt loops; it is odd, sometimes, her own instinct to recoil. Practically, she is far more dangerous than Peter is, to both herself and him. 

Abruptly, she shakes herself, wrong-footed once more.

She’s not – she thought they had _solved_ something, damn it.

“Yes,” she manages, which is not an answer to anything, nor a statement of anything, and simply a floundering affirmation of her own confusion, floating in the fresh Berhert air. One of the local fauna makes a sound from deeper in the forest, and Gamora stares at the sheer weight of open emotion on Peter Quill’s face.

“Has this been botherin’ you this whole time?” he asks, an odd note of weakness to his voice. Like someone has kicked the air out of his words.

“I –” Gamora starts, blinks again. A whisper, though she does not plan it to be: “I understood wrong.” 

The words are thick again in her throat, and she wonders if _this_ is what she is really going to be doing all the time around this man – this foolish, arrogant, confusing man, with love strewn haphazard all over the place, uncontained and half-contaminated by a great many other things. 

This – unpackaging of her own feelings. This infuriating, energy-consuming ordeal of swallowing back sudden surges of confusing, overwhelming emotion.

She is not _made_ for this.

“You understo –”

“I thought – I thought, that _my_ – had it been my parents, I would have – I pushed you to go and it was nothing like what I thought, the situation – your relationship with – I understood wrong and I’m not _made_ to make these decisions and _why do you keep listening to me?_ ”

Her voice is strained on the last note. Peter is sitting up properly now, still gaping up at her, but his long legs are splayed childishly in front of him in the dirt, disrupting some sort of imaginary gravitas. Gamora doesn’t quite know. The loose wire sparks again.

“Because – because you’re my friend,” he says, that same note still in his voice. “Because I _trust_ you. Gamora.”

“In a _fight_ ,” Gamora corrects, the tremble in her hands not quite lost. “You trust me in a _fight_ , because I’m _good_ at that, not in –”

“ _No_.” His voice is stronger now, more grounded, more self-assured. “Because you’re – you’re smart and you’re cool and amazing and a better person than I’ll ever be and I _care_ about what you freakin’ think and I _want_ your advice.” 

He seems to have surprised himself at this declaration – still terrible at this it seems, as much as she is – and she watches as he blinks a little, watches the faint flush cover his cheeks.

He is wrong, of course. Of course.

Gamora’s mouth has parted foolishly anyway.

“I –” she starts, very quietly. “But –”

“I listened to you ‘cause I _wanted_ to,” Peter says, in a belligerent voice that combats the pink of his skin and the sudden awkward stiffness of his broad shoulders. Still not petulant, though the words could be, in another universe. “And everything that happened, it – that wasn’t – well, you know, that guy was a fuckin’ jackass, and I fell for –” A pause, a tightening of his jaw and half a scowl. “It’s – it’s _not_ on you.”

She sways a little bit, on the spot, hands curled into fists.

Once more – that first instinct to _fight_.

(He is _wrong_ , cries the voice in her head, that has stopped sounding like her sister but is no less annoying.)

But she thinks – he’s telling the truth, whatever that means. That he did _want_ to. That he is not one to do things he does not _want_. 

Peter is a complicated person in any number of ways, more confusing to her than he has any right to be, and yet he is not confusing in this. This stubbornness, the cheerful insistence that he is allowed to _want_. _Want_ , not just _need_. That remains constant, _familiar_ , even if Gamora herself does not quite understand it yet. It is equal parts fascinating and frustrating. 

But _constant_ – a constancy, yes, translated into his seeking out of _what Gamora thinks_. Asking her opinion before showing true conviction in his own, with the admittedly unfortunate exception of how he deals with the state of his laundry. 

Gamora cannot identify any rational objective behind this – or rather, _could_ not, moments ago. Of course, by all accounts, Peter Quill is not a rational sort of being. His ability to cling to sentiment has only been magnified three-fold in her eyes since they first met. 

And here he is in front of her, in the wake of a thick and aching loss that he could by all accounts blame her for, still full of that same sentiment.

Gamora closes her mouth and takes a deep breath, and, abruptly, walks the few steps it takes for her to be standing alongside him. She slowly lowers herself down to the ground.

His legs are longer than hers, more ungainly in their sprawl over the braken. 

“I’m sorry,” she says finally.

Peter makes a funny sound that could be a snort but has too much _other_ in it to achieve humor; she pretends not to see the traitorous redness of his eyes that developed in the moments it took her to walk over. It’s only been three days, after all. Or rather – five, in total. _Since_. 

He tries to snort, as though her apology is cause for some sort of ironic commiseration, but all he says is, “Me too,” because he is Peter and he’s terrible at this but they are still _here_ , after all. Fumbling, he drops the multitool from his hand and reaches over to grab hers, covering it where it lays in the dirt. Gamora’s free hand picks at a chip of bark no bigger than her fingernail, silent.

“We ask – each other. For advice. Because we – want to. And care.”

She knows it sounds hesitant and awkward to her own ears, hates that a little bit but does not find herself on the defense. Peter’s hand is large and warm and grounding, his grip just strong and tight enough.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah – yeah. Or something.”

“Or something,” she repeats, the corners of her mouth twitching despite herself at his characteristic prolonging of such a simple affirmation. 

He rubs his thumb over her knuckles, gentle enough that it cannot have been premeditated, and Gamora lets herself stiffen for half of a second before rubbing the ridge of his wrist with her own thumb. His skin speaks of the warm-bloodedness of Terrans and is rough to the touch, and –

“– three more rigs to put up if we can manage t’keep Groot outta the engi – you’ve gotta be _kidding_.” Rocket is standing in the edge of the clearing, his small hands on his hips, eyes narrowed. “I thought nitwit over here was fixin’ the wing!”

Peter groans, and rolls his eyes.

“I _was_ fixin’ the wing, it’s almost done –”

“A couple near-death experiences an’ you two’re stinkin’ the scrap pile up with _feelings_. Unbelievable! C’mon, geddup off yer asses, we ain’t got all day! Those gold-y a-holes are still out there!”

“We’re goin’, we’re _goin_ ’,” says Peter, scrambling to his feet and dragging Gamora up with him, her hand still caught firmly in his. Rocket is shaking his head in disgust, but Gamora can see the looseness to his shoulders, the small spark of mirth in his beady eyes. She gives Peter’s hand one last squeeze and lets go, offering Rocket a stern look before she leaves.

The renewed sound of their barbless bickering follows her. The pads of her fingers close over the lingering dry warmth of Peter’s skin. His words play over in her head, along with the earnestness of his expression, and she supposes that there is nothing she can do to stop him from – valuing her.

It’s a peculiar thought. 

**

Their quarters on the Quadrant have always had a sense of quietude to them that the Milano never achieves, even – or especially – after three years inhabiting it. Gamora appreciates this, as well as the fact that Kraglin made an effort to clean the ancient furs still covering the bed in the captain’s cabin before very stubbornly offering it back to them for the time they’re stuck here recovering.

_Recovering_ is too strong a word to use for the aftermath of a job as purportedly simple as the one they just pulled themselves out of – but they always do seem to have terrible luck at the worst of times, Gamora thinks. And while Groot’s arm can grow back easily, Peter does not have the same regenerative abilities, and neither the metal spike to the leg nor the concussion are exactly trivialities.

In the two days they’ve been aboard, the dark hallways of the Quadrant have not been quiet, exactly, so much as comfortable and familiar. The added space allows for the typical cramped chaos of the Milano to be spread out across more surface area, and the laughter and swearing and miscellaneous crashes that can usually be heard from anywhere in the little M-ship are somewhat more muffled. 

Right now, though, it is early enough in the ship’s cycle for barely anyone to be awake.

Gamora does her due diligence anyway, pausing momentarily at each door to ensure that there is nothing amiss about her teammates’ snores before making her way up to the cockpit, where she knows Rocket had offered to take early watch. She braces her hand against the bar of the doorway, feeling the scrubbed rust catch against her skin, and frowns slightly; Rocket is nowhere to be seen. 

The displays are all up and open, though, as thought someone has just been using them, and in the pilot’s chair is sitting the half-assembled pieces of what looks like a hybrid between Kraglin’s old stun gun and a hairdryer, and so Gamora moves forward and slips into the closest copilot’s chair, running her finger along the edge of the display and scanning the ship’s stats. The haphazardly re-packaged first aid kit that Kraglin unearthed yesterday is still balanced half-open against the console, beside someone’s stray pair of old boots. Gamora bites down absently on her bottom lip and moves her eyes to the display, fingers braced against the sides. They only twitch very slightly as her eyes flick over the ship’s vitals. 

“It’s all workin’ ship shape, if that’s what you’re wondering,” comes Rocket’s voice from behind her, making her turn. She raises an eyebrow, and he holds up a yellow cylinder and waves it a little in the air. “Parts,” he explains, grinning and clambering back up into the pilot’s seat.

“Quiet watch?” she asks, thumb rubbing at the outside of the display for something to do. It’s a baseless urge that she should be able to control but finds she doesn’t particularly want to.

“Oh sure. Nothin’ _weird_ , if that’s what you’re askin’. Passed a ship with a viewport and caught an eyefull of some dickheads putting on a display.”

Gamora wrinkles her nose. “I can take over, if you want.”

“I didn’t know you was into voyeurism,” says Rocket easily, eyes flicking up from his project to catch hers before giving her a shit-eating grin. Gamora raises her eyebrows just a little bit higher. “Nah, I’m doin’ real good on my own. This hairdryer’s spicin’ things up.”

“Do you want – company?”

“I thought you was all concerned about Star-Idiot’s thick skull.”

“He can sleep for another few hours,” says Gamora, finally dropping her hand from the display and leaning back against her armrest. Peter will be perfectly fine this time, so long as someone wakes him up every few hours to make sure the concussion doesn’t complicate itself. 

Somewhere at the back of her mind, there are bigger things that are always a threat, but she ignores those for now, and lets her hands smooth over her thighs, remembering the heat of his skin as she brushed his bangs away from his forehead earlier. Still mostly coherent, despite being half-asleep and sore all over. A routine injury, she thinks, and bites back a grimace. Rocket sniffs in front of her.

It’s a developed skill, but Rocket could be putting on the best feigned look of nonchalance in the universe and it has been long enough that Gamora would catch the deliberately veiled concern regardless. She might have foolishly said before that three years was not _long_ , that it could be endured without incidence, but now, having actually lived and bled and screamed and laughed and sometimes cried with a ship-full of other people – watching the fur around Rocket’s neck ripple very slightly – Gamora can’t help but think that that two years is quite a long time after all.

Rocket says nothing, and only flicks his ears a little. Gamora bites down on her lip again to stop another smile and says, “So, a viewport.”

“Euch,” says Rocket, “ _humies_. Don’t have any frickin’ concept of privacy.” 

As though he himself never forgets to close the bathroom door. Gamora does not stop her smile from coming this time. She taps her fingers against the edge of her copilot’s seat. 

“How terrible for you.”

“Don’t gimme that shit,” says Rocket good-naturedly, spinning a couple parts into place. “We used to live in this scrap pile, and I know for a _fact_ that the cap’s diggs have a big ole’ viewport of their own.”

Gamora’s fingers freeze.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh huh.”

“ _Rocket_ ,” which comes out in something of a hiss, coupled with the very unfortunate heating of her cheeks. 

“I ‘aint a dumbass, au-contraire to popular bee-leaf.” He brings his tech up to bite at a loose wire and catches her eye again, mirth sparking through his sharp features. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Gamora again, her back ramrod straight, with what she supposes is the remainder of her abruptly blindsided dignity. But her smile is still stubbornly, bizarrely present, and something that feels strangely like laughter is tugging at the inside of her chest. “Rocket – _you_ – _Rocket_.”

“Uh huh,” he says again, spinning another piece into place. “You act like I haven’t already had the great misfortune of seeing Pete’s pale humie ass – _your_ fault, by the way.” He grins. “So what’s our plan? Do we got any new jobs lined up, or are we stuck in this junkyard for another couple days?”

“Kraglin hasn’t asked us to leave, yet,” Gamora says, still biting down on the insides of her cheek to wrestle away her absurd smile and willing her mods to dissipate the heat lingering in her cheeks sooner rather than later.

“Sure,” says Rocket, “moron. But what’s our next move?”

Gamora stills, angling her chin very slightly. 

“Why are you asking me?”

“Whaddaya mean, _why’re you askin’ me_. Who else’d I ask? _Groot_?”

Gamora leans forward in her seat, her cheeks loosening with the fade of her smile.

“I’m not the leader,” she says, because that should be obvious by now. It’s been two years, after all.

“Uh huh,” says Rocket, which is now suddenly far more off-putting than before. Gamora frowns, instinctive.

“We make decisions together. We always have.”

Rocket pauses, nimble claws stilling against the spare parts, and looks up to give her an appraising look. His whiskers twitch.

“You’re jokin’, right? Who’s _we_? You and Quill?”

It is an old fear, a familiar discomfort. She’s still not sure if it comes from her unfamiliarity with the concept of teamwork or the fact that it is a simple truth that she does not possess the ability. She thinks about Peter, passed out from exhaustion in the big captain’s bed, leg bandaged and temple bruised. _Recovering_ , from Badoon pirates with a little too much bloodlust and a very accommodating arms dealer. It’s hardly as though Kraglin is about to kick them out, but they need a plan more solid than _let’s stay here for now_ and Gamora feels her fists clench against the armrest, her shoulders suddenly tight. 

“No,” she says, “– the _team_.”

“Now see, most teams I know gotta have some sorta leader,” says Rocket, falling back on his haunches in the pilot’s chair. Gamora’s frown deepens.

“That’s Peter.”

“So he just asks for your advice on everythin’ for kicks? He don’t do that with me!”

She opens her mouth, frame tight and chorded, and finds suddenly that she has no idea what to say. Peter _does_ turn to her in almost everything, an instinctive, habitual consultation that can happen in unofficial seconds or long private conversation. But that’s hardly new information, doesn’t _mean_ anything new – he values her _opinion_ , they have established, as his best friend and partner, maybe even as his lover. That’s something she has learned people _do_ , when they value each other; ask them for advice, care about what they have to say, whether or not it is useful. She offers her skills to the team, as does everyone else, but she is not – 

_I am a warrior, and an assassin_ , sounds her own traitorous voice in her head. 

Gamora clenches her jaw, and breaks eye contact smoothly, turning her head and catching the lopsided first aid kit in her periphery. 

“I changed my mind,” she says, “I should go back and make sure Peter is alright.”

An excuse; she was just there, he is fine, there is nothing quantifiably concerning. He is still his incorrigible self, she knows, if marginally less lucid than usual. She can hear the half-awake and slurred, “‘m fine, baby,” that he kept repeating on loop in her head.

Still – Gamora rises to her feet, sudden if not jerky.

Rocket stares at her, for several long beats, and is about to open his mouth when she crosses the cockpit, strides deliberate. She can see him shaking his head in what appears to be disbelief as she pulls the kit open with precise movements and closes her fingers around the hypo of painkiller.

“We’ll consult on our next course of action as a _team_ ,” says Gamora, more forcefully than she intends to, pausing in the doorway as though something else is momentarily gluing her feet to the ground. “Once Peter’s more coherent.”

This is not a deflection, she maintains; Peter’s opinion is important, as is everyone’s, and he cannot give any opinions when he is necessarily resting, fast asleep and drooling into a pillow.

“Un-frickin-believable,” says Rocket.

Gamora feels her fingers tighten against the door. “If you have a problem with that –”

“No, no problem.” Sharp, quick, overriding. His eyes narrow, and he’s still holding the spare parts in his paws, head tilted. She can see his nose twitch, can almost anticipate the sarcastic remark that she’s going to have to deflect, the defensive bite that he clearly wants to deliver. Something equal parts self-deprecating and cruel. Instead, the fur on his neck flattens, slightly, and he slumps a little in his seat, sighing – almost like he’s understood something. “No problem, Gamora. Go make sure loverboy hasn’t died.”

It’s not entirely an out, nor wholly lacking in sting, but he turns back to his hairdryer, a succinct dismissal. Something about it makes Gamora’s chest constrict, the confused twist of someone who is missing something important. She angles her chin higher and quickly escapes, the hypo of painkiller clenched tightly in her hand.

**

She cannot remember the last time they were on Knowhere, and the gritty disarray of the streets outside the ship are almost comforting in their familiarity. 

If anything, it’s nice to have a day off – or rather, a day spent looking for a new job, if one toeing the edge of legality. Peter is in the engine room with Rocket, purportedly working on tune ups and attempting to come to some sort of agreement on how they’re going to strike a deal with the nearest willing employer at once. Mantis, fully grown into her Drax-appointed role of assistant family cook, has dragged Drax and Groot out into the grubby streets to re-stock on supplies but will most likely return with a crate full of useless knicknacks and colorful shawls, because Peter’s obsession with decorative accessories happens to be one of the more unfortunate habits that Mantis has picked up since joining them. 

If Gamora didn’t know any better, she would say that Nebula looks tired.

Nebula is never tired. She operates on a plane of existence where exhaustion is expressed on a spectrum of _minimal rage_ to _ultimate rage_. Usually the latter results in a slight sloppiness of footwork, but Gamora has not seen her sister in a while, so she cannot be sure that this is still the case.

“I traced her to Spartax,” says Nebula, in a tone where the _can you believe it_ is implied. Gamora cannot, in fact, believe it; Proxima Midnight is not known for casual ventures to luxurious empires past the far reaches of Nova Space. 

Gamora purses her lips, and runs the little wand in her hand over the nail of Nebula’s right index finger.

“You think he’s planning something?”

“He is always planning something,” says Nebula, the words rough but immediate. “He’s been planning something for years.”

Gamora tilts her head, feels the muscles in her neck tense. “Since Ronan.”

She can see her sister’s smirk out of the corner of her eye, the one that she knows is a hybrid mockery of both the unexpected wrench in Thanos’s machinations and the perceived incompetence of the people who threw that wrench. 

To be fair, Gamora does not think her reasoning is misplaced. The knowledge that none of them had any idea what the hell they were doing and definitely thought they were probably going to die somehow heightens the retrospective satisfaction at the idea that Thanos’s plans were set back, at least temporarily.

It is the _temporarily_ that is making Gamora’s neck stiff, and not Nebula’s performative derision; she knows by now that any knee-jerk sneering at Gamora’s pathwork family is more decades-honed instinct than anything else.

She finishes the index finger with measured precision and moves onto the middle one, methodic. Patchwork indeed, Gamora thinks, like this piecemeal set of Terran nail polishes that they have somehow amassed over the past few years. Technically, they’re Peter’s, but he’s entrusted her with them for the afternoon. Nebula’s unspoken mockery feels even less intentional when she’s sitting across Gamora and having the nails of her intact hand painted a bright, fluorescent pink, from a tarnished little bottle that reads “ly Han” and has been decorated with an aluminum sticker shaped like a star.

That was Groot’s doing, if Gamora recalls correctly.

“I’m going to follow Proxima to Spartax,” Nebula informs her, staring down at the way the wet polish shimmers on her nails. “Her presence there will likely help me in my quest to destroy our father.”

Gamora says nothing.

“I will – let you know if anything happens,” Nebula adds, sounding like she’s having a limb removed.

“Would you like our help?”

“No.”

Expected, but not entirely acceptable.

“We can keep ears to the ground. I can talk to Peter, organize our next jobs so that they can double as recon –”

“ _No_ ,” says Nebula. And then, as an afterthought: “I don’t need your help. Or Quill’s.”

“Nebula –”

But her sister has set her jaw, and turned her head away to glare deliberately at the common room wall. The harsh lines of her face are muted in the dim common room lighting, the cut ridges of her cybernetic implants shimmering almost as much as the nail polish. At least, Gamora thinks, she’s taking care of herself – is not covered in grime and rust, like she was when they took her from the Sovereign all those years ago.

Still – Gamora bites back an exasperated sigh and tries not to grind her teeth, nodding briefly before turning her attention towards Nebula’s pinky. The Milano’s engine is off, docked as they are, so there’s a quiet aboard the ship that Gamora isn’t entirely used to. From somewhere across the hall, there is the abrupt sound of Rocket yelling something, and Peter’s responding shout.

“You work – well together,” says Nebula, causing Gamora’s fingers to still and her eyes to look up. Nebula is looking at her again, and frowning very slightly.

“Who,” says Gamora, a little dumbly, and Nebula rolls her eyes.

“Ugh. _Quill_. You’re – whatever it’s called. A team.”

“We’re all a team,” Gamora points out, wrong-footed enough at this abrupt change of topic to not intuitively understand what Nebula’s trying to say. Then again – she has not always excelled at that, regardless of her state of mind.

Or maybe Nebula just always leaves her wrong-footed.

“Yes, but the other morons listen to you two. Which is foolish, because you are also a pair of morons.”

Gamora stares at her for a long moment, blinking. Something of the tension in her neck dissipates.

“Thank you,” she says, turning back to the pinky finger.

“Shut up. I said you’re morons.”

“I know.”

Gamora dots the end of the nail, busies herself with screwing the wand back into the polish bottle and using the edge of her thumb to wipe away the excess from Nebula’s fingers. They’re stiff, not unlike the rest of her sister’s frame.

“You balance each other out well, I guess,” says Nebula finally, in a quiet voice, and Gamora stops with her fiddling. Her hand still cupping Nebula’s, she looks up. “It’s annoying. Neither of you could do it on your own but somehow together you make it work.”

Still in that quiet voice, but Gamora can recognize the faint stain of a bitterness, that sliver of jealousy that still hasn’t gone away. She wonders what to say – if the real reason for this conversation is that Nebula wants to be part of their team and is too proud to say it, or if she is simply still thinking of their childhood, where they despite some semblance of effort did not, ultimately, balance each other out. She is not sure if they were not ever allowed to, or if that is just who they are as people. 

Gamora swallows, once, twice. 

_Head and heart_ , Peter had said once, foolish grin on his face as he coaxed her into dancing with him in front of the Quadrant’s viewport. 

Just last week, they had collapsed on the ground next to each other seconds after the explosions of their most recent job had died down, and the latest giant interdimensional outer space monster had been vanquished. They’d been laughing, Gamora remembers. The exhausted laughter of two people somehow still shocked that they came out of something alive, tinged with the comradery of having successfully accomplished something _together_.

She was the head, and he was the heart, and that is why they all were not dead yet.

Between Nebula and herself, Gamora thinks suddenly, she would still be the head.

“I could not make it work on my own,” agrees Gamora, her voice coming out somewhat tighter than she intends it to. Nebula’s chin jerks very slightly in response, and her fingers tangle momentarily with Gamora’s, giving a sharp squeeze before pulling them away. Gamora can feel the smeared paint job against her fingertips, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Imagine what would happen if you really were in this all alone,” says her sister, half a scoff. It’s not quite an insult, not quite a reassurance. Gamora realizes, suddenly, that she did not recoil at the thought that the rest of the team listens to her. She still shifts in her seat, though, something about that statement leaving her cold.

“Please don’t say that.”

Something ripples in Nebula’s expression, and it abruptly softens, which is oddly more disconcerting than the stubborn scowl of earlier.

“He probably won’t die this week,” Nebula offers. She doesn’t sound like she’s having a limb removed, this time. More or less.

“I –” Gamora closes her mouth, then opens it, then closes it again. Absurdly, a laugh builds in her chest, starting slow but gradually shaking out, enough that she covers her mouth with the hand still holding the nail polish bottle.

Nebula rolls her eyes. “You’re so weird.”

“Thank you,” says Gamora, between laughs that are more dry movements of her shoulders than anything. “That was very comforting.”

She shrugs, chin pulling inwards a little. “I mean, even if he did – you’d be – fine.”

Gamora feels her smile fade, her laughter die out. She feels that she should nod but cannot, fingers rubbing at the drying paint smears instinctively. Nebula shakes her head, as if shaking off the conversation itself, and then loosens – stands. 

It’s only been a few hours, but Gamora knows that if she had wanted to stay longer, even spend the night, she would have already made an awkward, stilted attempt to communicate that. She expects Nebula to leave it at that, to turn and exit the way she came, but her sister hesitates, and shifts her weight.

“It was good to see you,” Gamora offers quietly, because that feels the right thing to say. 

“I will,” says Nebula. “I will let you know if I – ugh. If I need help.”

Gamora takes her in, throat tightening again. 

“Okay. Try not to die.”

Nebula’s mouth twitches, the shadow of a smirk.

“You too. These imbeciles would be hopeless without you.”

Gamora feels her mouth twist in a tight smile, watches as Nebula straightens and finally does turn, crossing the common room and disappearing down the ship’s hall.

“Which is really saying a lot!” her sister adds over her shoulder, the sounds of her stomping walk echoing along the ship’s looser panels.

“That was implied!” Gamora calls back, and can hear the final scoff before there is a clang and the sound of the gangway being opened. She sits, dried nail polish covering her fingers, until her smile has faded completely. 

Her sister’s faith in her has never been a source of strength or weakness either way, but she can’t help but think about what she said. 

_Imagine what would happen if your really were in this all alone._

But she isn’t. They are a team, she knows. _Team_ leaders. Filling in each other’s gaps, supplementing where the other comes short. That’s how they work – how they’ve learned how to work.

She can do that. She doesn’t have to do it alone.

**

It is a shadow of a memory, more colours and voices than anything.

Green, bright and full like her own skin. Earthy purples like the colour of the tank top she favors, the one that cuts above her midriff. Flashes of gold, delicate and beaded. Rich reds and browns and greens filling the background in blurred patterns. 

The soft, muted glitter of metal, shining in the yellow haze of a little girl’s memory.

“Papa, may I hold your sword?”

“Not until you are older, _meya_ ,” in a voice like rich honey from the earth.

“Papa, I am old now, and it is so pretty.”

“You might hurt yourself, dear one. And then your Mama would never forgive me.”

Graceful lines, tall and elegant. The same purple colour, filling the corners of light in her mind’s eye.

“Mama does not understand,” says the little girl.

“Doesn’t she?”

“She doesn’t have a sword like you.”

“And yet,” says the voice, “so many bend happily and with grace to her will. That is a far more beautiful thing to possess, Gamora, than a sword.”

**

Gamora opens her eyes.

Her breathing sounds overloud to her own ears, despite the clamour on the other side of the wall. She can feel the puffs of warmth as her breath hits the ship’s panelling in front of her, the metal cool against her fingers. She steps back, and straightens her shoulders, the grooves of the datachip still sharply present against the pads of her fingers. 

Their small ship was not made for this many people, Gamora thinks, but the utter chaos she can see through the doorway to the Milano’s cockpit is not exactly new.

“– think is going on here? We need to get them back, we don’t even know what that psychopath wants with them –”

“And we can’t _get them back_ without some kinda _plan_ , humie! You think we ain’t just as _concerned_ as you is, we’ve lost folks too, pal –”

“And how exactly are we going to go in with a plan if this monster is two steps ahead of us at _every_ turn.”

“We go three steps ahead –”

“That’s fool’s speak.”

“Yeah? You good with jus’ _leavin’_ th –”

“I said no such thing!”

“He’s got to have a weakness, everyone’s gotta weakness –”

“Yeah, but guess what lady, _he_ currently has us by the balls, so –”

“That don’t mean –”

“We are talking about a fifteen year old _child_!”

“Who _you_ brought up he –”

“ENOUGH!”

The words do not rip themselves from her throat, Gamora thinks, so much as they are forcefully ejected into the midst of the fray. They cut through like a sharp knife against skin, smooth and silencing.

The occupants of the cockpit stare at her, and the noise disappears like a blown-out candle.

For a moment, she freezes. Rocket is perched on the head of the pilot’s seat, claws digging into the leather covering to hold himself up, his ears flattened. Drax stands behind him, fists clenched tightly by his sides and knives customarily strapped to his calves, with Mantis behind _him_ , nearly blending into the wall if not for the flickering glow of her antennae and the anguished expression on her face. Across from them – their allies. A king without his people, a warrior without a throne to swear to, and a Terran man, his bright armored breastplate gouged and discoloured by the elements, grief twisting his sloping features.

It’s the kind of twisting that speaks of someone who knows how to hide it and has run out of the stamina to do so, has finally faced a force too great to cover up. Gamora can understand this.

She says, again, more quietly but no less clear and commanding: “Enough.”

Tony Stark releases a slow, shaking breath; against the console, Thor shifts, the thick trunks of his crossed arms tightening, and the Valkyrie’s jaw works, her hooded eyes trained on Rocket rather than Gamora. 

Gamora blinks against her drying eyes, and for a moment, she freezes. There are voices panicked and grating shouting over the comms, voices deep and terrifying booming over the ship’s speakers, _his_ voice yelling out her name, desperation drowning out its grounding familiarity. She opens her eyes to Stark’s trembling hands and her fingers tighten again around the datachip she holds, feels the hot swoop of guilt deep in her stomach at the thought that there is another child trapped in Thanos’s grasp. 

But she knows – Peter will take care of him. Peter won’t let anything happen to him.

She’s not sure if this is a thought more nauseating than comforting, but it is all she can manage to use against the fear reflected in Stark’s eyes, the empty space where the bright-eyed, teenage Spiderman should stand.

Gamora inhales.

“Rocket,” she says, “pull up our exact coordinates. Send a signal out to Kraglin and see if he’s had word of my sister. Mantis, go make sure Groot is alright, we shouldn’t leave him alone right now. Drax, I need you to help Thor retrace our steps to the wreckage we found him in –” she pauses, holds the Asgardian’s gaze as her hands slip over the ship’s controls fluid with muscle memory, pulling out the encrypted databank and keying in the captain’s code she’s had memorized since Berhert. Thor inclines his head, and Gamora nods, flicking her thumb over the drive’s controls and bringing their precious, stolen datachip up to enter it into the ship. “That’s where we start our tracking. If we can head him off before he reaches the Terran quadrant –”

Gamora inserts the datachip into the drive, and pulls up the map that they risked so very much to get.

Valkyrie’s voice sounds on the end of a low whistle as the coordinate map is projected into the cockpit, as Thanos’s entire plan is cut open at the seams. “Three steps ahead, huh.”

It’s almost enough.

“Woah, hey, hold up.” Gamora does not start, but turns her head sharply at the voice; Stark’s hand has come up, seemingly of its own accord, finger pointing at nothing. “How come all of a sudden you’re the leader? We said if we were gonna take this guy down we’d have to work together, everyone giving input. That’s what we said –”

“Things have changed,” Gamora starts, hand tightening against the Milano’s console. 

“ _Changed_ –”

“Tony,” Thor says, voice low and warning, grounding in any other situation.

“How do I know we can trust you,” says Stark, his volume rising in a way that is strikingly unintentional, voice laced with desperation. “We met you _two_ days ago, I can’t afford to risk the safety of –”

“A couple bipedal idiots on nowheresville?” scoffs Rocket. “And here we are concerned about the whole d’ast galaxy –”

“ _Rocket_ ,” snaps Gamora, reflexive, even as Stark takes a step forward, his arms spreading.

“No one agreed that you’re just unequivocally in charge, Elphaba. How do we even know we can trust you?”

“ _Tony_ ,” starts Thor again – Gamora feels her shoulders stiffen of their own accord, her body poised subconsciously to fight even as she struggles to remain impassive.

“I am trying to _help_ –” 

“Your boyfriend gets kidnapped and now you’re the boss?”

"Oi!"

"Please --"

“You will _not_ speak to me like that,” she hisses, her own voice betraying her and whipping out sharp and loud over Drax’s angry shout and Valkyrie’s immediate protest, Mantis's strained exclamation. Her fingers have numbed. 

_He’s lost people too_ , a voice in her head reminds her, and Gamora wills herself to _breathe_ , to hold back, for the sake of the universe if not her loved ones –

“You said it yourself,” Stark says, belligerent but with a voice that’s roughening, breaking, running out of steam. _He's lost people too_ , she thinks, brittle -- “Why the _hell_ should we listen to you? You’re a daughter of Thanos, how do we know you’re not gonna double cross us?”

Dead silence. Gamora feels her blood go cold, feels the air suck out of her lungs. There’s an odd sort of rush in her ears, the buildup of chaos that she has absolutely no control over. Vaguely, she registers Thor straighten where he stands, Drax take the reflexive, angry step forward, Rocket bring up the paw to hold him back, Valkyrie’s instinctive grip over the hilt of her knife. The Milano hums against the sudden quiet, its engines’ thrum under her fingers so familiar that it is almost a part of her.

An echoing shout, in the back of her mind: _Gamora, go! GO!_

Her own inability to stop him from ejecting the escape pod, her on one side of the barrier and him on the other.

_Why do you keep_ listening _to me?!_

She inhales.

“You should listen to me,” says Gamora, her voice low and even and unwavering, injected with a steel that was forged in her at the age of thirteen, “because I am now the captain of this ship. And unlike its previous captain, I have no qualms about jettisoning you into the black to find your own way home if you are not willing to help us defeat Thanos in the only way possible.”

Stark’s eyes are wide, the dark of the viewport reflecting in them, making the paleness of his skin stand out more sharply in contrast. 

Silence still – for one beat, two.

Gamora says, “That’s what I thought,” voice catching in a way she does no intend it to, and sweeps out of the room. 

She doesn’t realize that she is crying until she reaches the couch in the common area, until her knees hit up against it and she has to clutch its back with her trembling fingers to steady herself. Her fingers twist into the threadbare upholstery of the awful couch – they’ve been meaning to get a new one for ages, she thinks, tries to _breathe_ , and when all of this is over they will, they _will_ , they’ll go to a nice Xandarian furniture place and pay far too many units but Xandar has been half-destroyed and _when this is all over_ – 

She refuses to let the fear crawl its way into her throat, swallows it back with a force that makes her neck throb. She hasn't cried in months, and does not intend to do so now. Inhale. Exhale. She will call Nebula, she will outsmart Thanos, she will make things right. Peter is clever and resourceful and the most foolish, sentimental part of her screams that she would _know_ if he were truly gone, would feel it in the surgically altered marrow of her bones.

Her choking swallows spasm, the gasp ripping from her throat. Her free hand comes up on reflex, covering her mouth. She tries to breathe. 

_Even if he did, you’d be fine_.

Nebula’s voice is not comforting – possibly never has been comforting, but it’s _there_ , always, like an echo mocking her in the cave of Gamora’s memories. 

She needs to find Nebula, she thinks again, the room in front of her blurring more by the second. Gamora blinks rapidly, angrily, and thinks again: she needs to find Nebula. She cannot lose her sister too.

“Gamora.”

She does start, this time, and whips around at the voice, hand smearing away from her mouth jerky and reflexive to wipe at her cheek. 

Rocket’s hands have come up, surrendering, as though he expected her to jump, a facsimile of a soothing gesture. His expression is not kind when directed up at her – maybe never kind – but _determined_. Grounded.

“I –” she starts, hoarse and breaking, and sees Drax’s hulking figure in the doorway, Mantis clutching her hands together at his side. Behind Mantis, Groot pokes his head out of the shadows, young face creased with concern.

“Tell us what you need us to do,” says Drax, deep voice the most sincere she has ever heard him. Her hand stops shaking, just a little. Gamora’s eyes slide back to Rocket. 

He inclines his triangular head, eyes almost knowing. 

“You’re the leader,” he says.

Her voice comes out breaking, weakness obviously apparent, but it comes out. Gamora thinks that either way, the people in front of her don't care.

“We save our friends,” she says, the rasp pushed aside by the command in her voice. She watches as the corners of Rocket’s mouth twitch in the beginnings of a grin. “ _And_ the universe." _Inhale._ "Let’s go.”


End file.
